Grandmother who kept WWII gun has prison sentence quashed

A GRANDMOTHER who was jailed for five years for keeping her father's Second World War pistol under her mattress had her sentence quashed today.

Gail Cochrane, 53, was instead ordered to perform 240 hours of community service after appeal judges overturned her sentence.

Ms Cochrane pleaded guilty to being in possession of a prohibited weapon - a Browning 7.65mm self-loading pistol - contrary to part of the Firearms Act 1968, at a hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh on April 26.

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She was sentenced to five years, the minimum penalty for the offence in the absence of "exceptional circumstances relating to the offence or to the offender".

Her father had served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and Ms Cochrane found the pistol among his possessions after he died in about 1981.

She claimed to have kept it for sentimental reasons and it did not occur to her to hand it in to the authorities.

Police found the weapon under the mattress of her bed on June 17, 2009 when they went to her house in Dundee to look for her son, for whom they had an outstanding arrest warrant.

The gun was a self-loading automatic pistol manufactured in the then Czechoslovakia, believed to have been made in about 1927.

Although in poor external condition it was still in working order and capable of firing bullets. Ms Cochrane had no ammunition for it.

The appeal judges considered whether or not "exceptional circumstances" relating to the offence or to the offender existed.

They found that the sentencing judge did not appear to have attached significance to Ms Cochrane's role in the care of her grandchildren, whose mother had a drug problem.

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It was also not apparent that the sentencing judge took account of her evidence that she was unaware that she needed a licence for the pistol.

In his written opinion Lord Reed said it was a "difficult and anxious case".

He wrote: "As I have explained, the purpose of the minimum sentence required by section 51A is to send out a deterrent message.

"If however, taking into account all the circumstances relating to a particular offence or a particular offender, such a term of imprisonment appears arbitrary and disproportionate, that case is an exception to the norm.

"Considering the present case in that context, one significant and unusual feature is that the pistol was a wartime souvenir which had been in the possession of the appellant's father since the Second World War and had been found by the appellant amongst his effects: this is not a case of a weapon being deliberately acquired.

"A second important and unusual feature is that the court has to proceed on the basis that the appellant did not know that her possession of the pistol was unlawful."

He observed that "a deterrent sentence will have no deterrent effect upon those who have no idea that they are doing anything wrong".

Bearing in mind Ms Cochrane's early plea of guilty, the low risk of reoffending and her personal circumstances, the court concluded that it could appropriately impose an order for community service.

The appeal judges' decision to support the appeal was not unanimous, with one of the three dissenting.